a longing like despair
by thefudge is grumpy
Summary: When Mikael marries Abby Bennett, young Bonnie is forced to become a sister to a boy who seems to hate her. Set in the late 19th century.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I blame this entire premise and story on Tom Hardy, Anastasia-G, sibling incest, trash, my mother and basically everyone who indulges my strange appetites. But enjoy!_

 _._

* * *

 _Oh! then a longing like despair_

 _Is to their farthest caverns sent;_

 _For surely once, they feel, we were_

 _Parts of a single continent!_

(Matthew Arnold - To Marguerite: Continued)

* * *

 **1: poppies**

* * *

Here, in this forsaken land, there was an abundance of wet grass which thirsted for sunlight it never received.

In this neck of the woods, every shadow poured forth like a river and engulfed the air, so that as you walked, your body seemed to float.

He remembered the sound of logs being felled, the happy whistles that carried over the chalk-white cliffs, the smell of joyful fires and the shine of fish scales. He remembered the raucous sea, splashing against the rocks, and how he had to shout to be heard when he walked on the shore. His old home had been blues and yellows and softly violet-tinged dreams.

The Falls were, as their name, a descent. Into browns and murky reds and faded greens.

His eyes followed the ground now. Not the sky. Not anymore.

* * *

Bonnie was ushered into the room to see her dying grandmother. Sheila Bennett, the matriarch who had survived all of her husbands and uncles and brothers, was going to her final resting place.

Her daughter, Abby, was sitting stiffly at her bedside, already dressed in black chiffon, holding a spoon in her hand. She was trying to convince her mother to take her medicine, bartering with her like you would with a butcher at the market,

"If you swallow this one spoonful, the doctor says you needn't take one for another hour. Just one spoonful, Mama. That's all I need."

"You are already dressed to bury me," Sheila spoke hoarsely, expelling air like a ghost through her white lips. "I'd rather get buried than take that poison."

"It's not poison," Abby replied, clenching one fist against her lap. Bonnie watched her mother's hands. Usually, they told a fuller story than her face. Abigail had always been apt at carrying a mask.

"It tastes like it," Sheila murmured with a weary smile. "Is that the little bumpkin, come to see me off?"

Bonnie directed her gaze at the tufted rug whose imprints had faded with time and now looked like careless smears of thread. Everyone said she had a sociable nature for a child, but her grandmother always made her a little shy. Not because Sheila Bennett was cold or forbidding, but because she was so very knowledgeable about life and, like many old people, seemed to know your whole future before she even spoke to you. Bonnie sometimes saw her future in those warm dark eyes, and she looked away.

Abby raised her head impatiently. "Come kiss your grandmother, Bonnie."

The little girl stepped forward, knowing very well that any hesitation on her part would be scolded severely. She was interrupted, however, by the door parting softly and the maid scurrying inside with a hot tray. Sheila's last supper.

In the commotion and the clinging of cutlery and glasses, Bonnie was stranded somewhere in the middle of the room. Her eyes surveyed the toffee-colored wallpaper and marveled at the heavy rosewood furniture which seemed to turn a darker shade of red each year. She was lost, as children sometimes are, in this visual feast and when her eyes returned to the scene at hand, her mother and grandmother were arguing.

"You know there's nothing worse than disobeying a dying mother's wish," Sheila was saying, clenching the sheets between her fists.

"Please, no more of this foolishness, Mother. No more talk of disobedience, when everything I am doing is for this family –"

"You are marrying him for yourself, child! And yourself alone!" Sheila suddenly cried out, her voice rising higher than Bonnie had ever heard it go. She was frozen between breaths.

"I don't want to hear this. You will make yourself sick," Abby pleaded, shaking her head like a doll whose strings had broken.

"He will bring downfall on us all! No good can come from wedding a man with such a troubled past, such a troubled family! You should be raising _your_ own daughter, not mothering his sons!"

It was at that moment that Abby remembered Bonnie was still in the room. Watching them.

The spoon was shaking in her hand, her mask slightly askew. But she gathered herself enough to tell her daughter to go play outside.

"But –"

"This conversation does not concern you. I shall send Astrid to come fetch you later."

There was no point arguing further, not when her mother was in such a formidable mood.

 _The Bennett women… a fermented wine…_

She remembered hearing these fragments from another conversation she shouldn't have heard. She couldn't remember the speaker, or his face, but it had been a man.

She ran out of the room, away from the women.

She never got to say goodbye to her grandmother. She died that afternoon.

* * *

The ceremony was a quiet affair. Most of the town found out about it in the following weeks, the evidence being presented in several dispatches to the Bennett house. Luggage and horses and the habit of men. Servants and masters. All clearly sons of Adam.

The Falls had always looked upon Bennett Hall (as it was called) as a place of women, a gyneceum of history and shadows. They had hardly seen a man step foot in that quiet haven, not since Abby had returned with a full belly on her mother's doorstep nine years before. No one ever managed to extract the precious information of _who_ had wooed and jilted her. For all intents and purposes, an angel had descended upon her shoulders and little Bonnie Bennet's only father was the Lord.

Although, the townsfolk doubted that even He had supremacy in that household.

And now, so many strange men in one fell swoop.

Abigail Bennett had found a suitor. The stain she had carried with her for so many years was going to be starched and ironed out. But how foolish to have married a foreigner of all things - a being of equivocal origins - when there were so many honest and well-reputed men in town who would have forgiven her indelicacy.

They only knew him as Mikael, his last name being a mystery. In scandalous fashion, it was rumored he had taken _her_ last name. The townsfolk assumed that he either came from destitution and had _no_ value attached to his ilk, or that he was perhaps an infamous European baron who was hiding in the "colonies" for reasons of safety. Both interpretations sparked outrage among them. Here, in their very bosom, they were cradling a possible snake. It was well and good to let women be women in their own house, but to allow them to attract emissaries of a different faith and country…

Some said he was, by all accounts, American but he had lived on the Pacific Coast all his life, and had traded with so many Eastern foreigners that they had rubbed off on him and he on them, no doubt. You couldn't really trust someone from the opposite plane of the country.

Some young girls whispered at street corners that he was devilishly handsome, that there was a finesse about him which was both alluring and a little terrifying. Mothers would scold their daughters for such idle prattle, but they were also curious about this new man's look and gait.

When he first came into the town square to speak to a few merchants about procuring some new ploughs, he did not strut or walk with purpose. He did not wear a colorful suit with feathers. He did not tip his hat mischievously. He was a sober, solid block of man. And yet, he seemed to slide through the people, as if he wasn't really there, as if the world recast itself around his movements. He neither gave one impression of the Pacific, nor of French court.

Curious. Unsettling. Unpleasant.

They never saw Abby and Mikael walking or driving together through town, like any new married couple would, as a show of respect to the Falls. No, they had cooped themselves up in the gyneceum, the Bennett Hall, where no doubt, they were indulging in vigorous sin. Yes, they were married, but if he _was_ a secret European baron, no doubt he was teaching her some very unsavory methods of love.

And to think, he had also brought sons with him.

* * *

Elijah, the older boy, studious, polite, obliging. He waited for the women to pass him by in the street. He brushed the dust out of his clothes with utmost care. He always asked if he could help. He won the town immediately by voicing his ambition clearly; he was not here to stay for long, nor was he here to disturb. He was preparing, quite arduously, to take up the cassock, to become a man of the Faith. He walked into church like a prisoner stepping out of his fetters. It was here where they saw him smile beatifically at the ceiling. It was here where he seemed to breathe in the rarefied air. He came alive in prayer.

Elsewhere, he was like a somnambulist, walking through life blindly. Whenever he followed his father on duties through town, he looked serious and unhappy. One might say he looked dead. He seemed to disapprove of Mikael, but not in any passionate way. It was more the disgust of youth directed at its feeble predecessors, the elders they did not understand, nor cared to.

But the elders understood Elijah. His name was Biblical enough to guide his destiny. He was only a threat to himself.

The other son, however.

Well, he was a character. A bad one. A very bad one indeed.

* * *

She had only lived nine years of this small, uneventful life. She was a child, and she was called a child by many, and she acknowledged in her heart that she was younger than her mind, because her mind kept thinking about her missing father, the father she did not have and would never have. Her mother had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he had died, perished, gone to his grave sooner than expected. Which is how Bonnie knew, instinctively, that he was alive somewhere.

She didn't know how she could tell when older people lied. Her grandmother had once tried to tell her a fib, and Bonnie had answered back, more bravely than intended,

"I don't believe you!"

Sheila had laughed heartily. "This one's got a bit of people magic in her."

 _People magic._

For days she thought of nothing else but this grainy epithet. People magic. The magic of people, the people of magic. It rumbled in her head like thunder.

Eventually, she gathered up her courage and went to speak to Martha, the oldest servant in the house, whose eyes were white with cataracts.

Martha exposed her broken teeth and whispered softly in her ear,

"The Old Mistress, Emily Bennett. Your mother's great-grandmother. They used to say she could look inside people and see their illness. Predicted more than one death in her day. Every Bennett has a gift, it's told. Mistress Sheila can tell you your future if you look her in the eye. Mistress Abigail…well, don't go telling on me, but she can make any man desire her. _Love_ her? 'Haps not, but they sure want her. And you, well, suppose you can see through deceit. So tell me, how many lies have I told ye?"

Bonnie stared at Martha's doughy, lined face.

"None."

The old woman laughed, harder than Sheila. "You'll be trouble for the missus."

Perhaps she did have a gift, perhaps she could tell. Because when she first saw her stepfather come forward to shake her hand, she knew he was lying.

He told her, "how good it is to meet you, sweet girl. I have some brothers I'd like you to meet."

And somehow, though these words were not supposed to hold either truth or falsehood, they had rung like deception.

She walked down the porch steps with her mother to meet the boys.

 _Ee-ly-jah._

His name was mythical, important. He smiled politely, like a town clerk, and shook her hand. He was infinitely older than her pitiful nine years. He carried books with him in his small bag. She could see their hard outline through the canvas sack. He was wearing a new suit, and his collar bit into his skin, but he didn't seem to mind. He was looking at the house beyond her, attaching her to this house, to his new life.

"Niklaus. Come here."

The words were spat more than spoken, like pebbles thrown at a wall. Bonnie looked up.

Mikael dragged a young boy by the elbow and pushed him forward, flung him, to be precise, into her line of vision.

This one wasn't older. This one might have lived as much as she had. His face was covered in dust and dirt, but not the warm grind of people working the field or hammering horseshoes. This dirt was a fine sheen of some foreign element, as if his face was coated in the red shadow that her grandmother's rosewood furniture bled with the passage of time.

In a cold flicker, she realized she had seen him before.

* * *

That morning, she had run down to the field of poppies again. They were in bloom. She loved to lie prostrate against the coarse ground and let them tickle her toes. There was not a better feeling in the world than falling in a sleepy, opium daze among their fat, red petals.

So much of her life seemed to be governed by red.

This was not a secret place, it was only a few acres away from the house, but it felt like a different world to her. A world which did not have the taint of death. She felt sorry she hadn't said goodbye to her grandmother. She felt sorry she hadn't cried at the funeral. How could she cry when Abby was squeezing her hand like fire? But she wouldn't waste these minutes on regrets. She was here to sleep, but not really sleep, to dream, but only half so. Astrid had told her she was allowed only ten minutes of napping, after which she'd come and pick her up and take her back to the house. She was supposed to have a bath. To look prim and proper for her new father.

The shadows fell, as clockwork, over the poppies and Bonnie raised her head.

She had heard a swish, a sound of tearing. The kind of sound you ran away from him.

Astrid was smoking secretly behind a tall oak. She wasn't watching her.

Bonnie took uncertain steps, through the petals, towards the cutting noise.

She climbed up a raised mound of thistles and she watched from that vantage point as a small dark figure weaved through the field of poppies, cutting them down, one by one. He held a knife in his hand, with which he chopped and ripped the flowers, slowly, methodically. Stem by stem. She couldn't describe it plainly. There was a patience in his muscles. He wanted to graze the earth. His blade shone like teeth in the morning's cool light.

His head shot up all of a sudden. He stared behind him suspiciously.

Bonnie ducked down, her forehead almost kissing the earth. Her breath was like a bird trapped in her throat. Had he heard her? Had he _sensed_ her? She put a hand over her mouth, to stop the sounds from coming out.

She lay there for hours, it seemed, until Astrid called for her.

"Miss Bennett! Bonnie!"

 _No, no, don't call my name_ , she cried out in her head. _He'll hear it. And know it._

* * *

And here he was again. The same boy.

A deep-set scowl crowned his heavy features. He looked like he was carved from clay, and though Astrid had told her that "all of us were once clay, in the hand of God", it seemed to her God had fashioned him a little different.

He did not shake her hand. He did not nod or smile. He stood in front of her like cattle presented at the fair. His hands at his side, his fingers open. He was displayed to her in his ugly glory.

His eyes were filled with disdain. Not just for her, but for this whole world that she inhabited. He stared at her little green dress, the most handsome thing she owned, with its ribbons and lace and frills, and she could see, in his muscles and the way they twitched, the same dark patience. If he could, he would take a knife and sever her, like he'd cut down the poppies.

Bonnie folded her hands against the dress. She suddenly felt she should have worn anything else.

Mikael was waiting behind him expectantly, his eyes scouring him with barely concealed contempt.

She was afraid, suddenly, that if neither of them did anything, her new father would step between them like a flash of lightning and carry away his son in the same violent fashion. Perhaps to punish him.

Bonnie squeezed her little fists in fear and stepped forward.

She had always been good at anticipating needs. The grown-ups around her were easy to read, because they all craved something indeterminate, impossible to fulfill. They were in constant want.

She raised her hand up, her eyes beckoning to her new brother to take hold.

But he fixed her with the same cool hatred that seemed to flatten Bennett Hall itself. There was even the hint of a cruel smile in that loathing.

Bonnie clenched her teeth. She would tell him later. Tell him that he was a brute and that she had done him a favor.

She closed the gap between them and threw her hands quickly, clumsily around his neck. A forceful embrace.

She dipped her chin on his shoulder for a few moments, smelling sweat and iron and something that reminded her of Old Man Saltzman from town, who gave her salted pork rinds to eat as she walked down the promenade. Her fists gripped his thin shirt for dear life, feeling the bones and muscles underneath like unforgiving peaks and valleys.

And then she let go, releasing the gap, letting it grow again between them.

She could feel her mother's gaze on her back. It was likely she did not approve of this sudden display of emotion, warranted by absolutely nothing. But Mikael nodded, satisfied, and turned his eyes away from his son.

Bonnie released a caged breath.

The boy raised his hand to the back of his neck, where she had briefly touched him with her skin. His expression was unreadable. It was not friendly, or in any way grateful. Quite the opposite. His scorn had not been tempered. But it seemed as if he had put his knife away, for now.

"Come, let us go inside," Abby urged behind her.

The new family walked reluctantly towards the house.

Bonnie wished her grandmother were still alive. Not because Sheila Bennett could somehow drive away these strangers, but because she could tell her the future. She wanted to look into her eyes and see what lay ahead. For now, there were only shadows.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: i am ignoring academic responsibilities and updating this story which owns me spiritually. In other news, this chapter is kind of disturbing? Like seriously, if you are grossed out by certain aspects of the body, maybe squint while you read. Thank you so much for reviewing, I'm all a'blushing that you like my pretentious style. Anyway enjoy the trash! (cuz hooo boy, this one's rly trash)_

* * *

 **2: mud**

Bennett Hall was where prayer came to die. The walls were encrusted with the husks of weathered skin, women and men whose thumbs had worried over the wainscots until the wood resembled a strange, sleepless eye. Wherever he walked in this grand old house, Elijah felt the remnants of the past, tiptoeing behind him, biting into apples. It wasn't a historical past, with clear foundations, like trees which shoot upright towards the sky. It was like a root growing inwards, a past that had been corroborated but not ascertained, a history that did not really exist, but whose material proof was undeniable.

A living paradox.

He could not find peace for prayer in this den of secrets. The women of the house were kind and polite to him, but they all, servants and cooks included, looked at him through slanted eyes, not seeing him properly, not betting on his survival.

So he went outside to pray, went into town, went into the woods.

That was where he saw his half-brother and his half-sister.

* * *

Mikael stood in her grandmother's old chair. It had never been a man's chair, not as far as she could remember, but then again she was so young, so unimportant in the scheme of things. Who knew what that chair had been used for in the past?

Her new father was swirling his glass of bourbon with an almost theatrical precision, watching the liquid slosh against the rim methodically. Back and forth, back and forth. Abby was sitting on the small sofa, the one in the shape of a swan's neck which no one never used because no one in the house could unsee the bird it was meant to represent. Her grandmother had used it to pile newspapers.

She wondered why her mother had chosen that place now, what it meant.

"How old are you, my dear?"

The question startled her. As a child, Bonnie was rarely asked that. People knew, of course, that she was too young for some things, too old for others, but the inquiry was usually avoided, because it harkened back to her mother's shameful return to the Falls, belly-up.

"Nine, Sir."

"She will be ten in two months' time," her mother supplied airily, as if she were referring to an object around the house which had accumulated age.

"Hmm. If you were a young boy, Bonnie," Mikael addressed her directly again, "this would be the time to send you to school."

She felt a tug of fear, sharp and swift, at the thought of that mystical watch-tower, _School_. She had heard horror stories, children dissolving in tears, red-slapped cheeks, broken pen nibs.

"Please, Sir."

Mikael drew himself up a little, although the bourbon still swirled, clockwise, in his glass.

"Yes, my dear?"

"Don't send me to school."

Her mother made a sound in the middle of her throat, as if she had swallowed up the swan and all its feathers.

Her new father smiled. "Can you read and write?"

Bonnie remembered Astrid's listless, often inarticulate lessons. They sat together in the small library, looking over water-stained atlases, glancing at medicine books and herbariums (her grandmother's private collection, from the time she was a midwife, long before she met the lumber mill magnate), and feeling as if words were not as important as touching the page.

"Yes. A little."

Mikael's smile remained unmoving. "Well, that's not all a young lady should be able to do. Don't fret, now. I am only thinking of the seminary for young girls in Richmond."

"But, Sir…" she trailed off, feeling sweat pool wretchedly on her upper lip.

"Yes?" he asked again, patiently.

"Your…your son. He's my age and he's not in school."

Like a sparrow which flies into the dead of winter against all odds, she flung her words into the blizzard. Mikael's smile turned into a rictus. His eyes shifted left, towards the door.

"Speak of the devil. There he is, lurking. _My_ son." His tone was cajoling, eerie in its stillness. "Make yourself known, Niklaus."

Bonnie cast her eyes over her shoulder. The strange boy was standing by the open door, leaning half in the shadows, his expression like the bottom of a well. His profile, even in the faint light, looked unfinished.

He trod into the room with heavy steps, like a farmhand, though there was something contained about him, as if he knew what would come next.

Her mother clasped her fingers. The beautiful rings she wore on each knuckle clinked like little feet.

"Now, your sister has asked me why I don't send _you_ to school. Tell her why."

Bonnie opened her lips. She wished she could say something nice and good that would make everyone happy. Why were they all looking at her?

The young boy's gaze was dipped in hatred. The muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he turned to his father.

"I'm too bad for school," he spoke swiftly, gruffly. But there was a petulance in his voice, something like a singing rhyme.

 _I'm too bad for school, too bad for school, too bad for school…_

"There you have it," Mikael raised his glass, in salute.

Bonnie watched the bourbon slosh precariously, almost running over.

"Are you too bad for school, Bonnie?" he asked, but not _really_ asked. He was not expecting a yes.

That was when Abby spoke up. "She'll do very well. I will make sure of it."

The onslaught from both of them drove spikes of fear into her flesh. They were in agreement. She turned to the only other person in the room who was in her position.

Her new brother had slunk towards the shadows again, leaning against the door with a sardonic smile on his lips. As if to say, _they have you now_.

* * *

She followed him for a few days, trying to catch him alone. Niklaus was alone by virtue, wandering through the darker, spider-webbed corners of the house, climbing up the tallest trees in the woods and not coming down for hours, sleeping in the stable next to the horses, bathing directly in the lake at the crack of dawn. But he did not allow other people to enter that solitary circle. He was taciturn, although not aloof. He was constantly watching. If he sensed you were coming, he'd glare at you and walk away.

It wasn't that his father let him run wild; it was that Mikael expected his son to make himself scarce. Because he was bad.

Bonnie thought she understood. Martha had told her once that her real father must have been a bad man and when she had asked what that meant, the old woman had showed her the blackened nail on her left hand.

"Hit m'self with a hammer here when I was little. Rest of my hand is fine, 'scept for this old bugger. It's never gonna change."

So, Niklaus was like that bad nail, you couldn't change him and you just had to leave him like that. But who had hit him with the hammer?

"All bad men start somewhere," Martha had said.

* * *

She cornered him in the attic. She had suspected he would go up there eventually, because no one else would climb up the rickety stairs and risk falling to their death. Only children could do it. Their weight being what it was.

"Please. Please don't go," she urged him as she saw shadows moving quickly towards the trapdoor.

She heard a few jars being upended. A lonely mouse scurried underneath a crumbling hat stand.

"Please, I need to ask you."

She saw a glimmer of eyes, a flash of hands. "What do you _want_?"

Bonnie tugged at the collar of her woolen dress. "How do you become too bad for school?"

The silence was oppressive, because she knew he was there, watching, listening, thinking.

"Please, I don't want to go to school."

His limbs moved out of the shadows like separate animals. "Say you're sorry first."

Bonnie frowned, not expecting his voice to sound so dry and matter-of-fact.

"Sorry for what?"

"For touching me in front of everyone," he drawled, evincing his displeasure.

She remembered their short-lived embrace, a spectacle meant to lull their audience. She had thought she was doing him a kindness.

And now she had to say sorry.

Bonnie felt her jaw click against her will.

"I didn't want to touch you. You smell," she said tartly, childishly, but with much satisfaction.

"At least I have a smell," he shot back with equal malice, and though she did not understand his meaning fully, she felt the sting.

"Please. How do you become too bad for school?" she repeated, balling her fists into little pits.

"Say you're sorry first," he taunted, coming into the light that sifted through a broken sky window above their heads.

Bonnie saw that his hair was a mess of curls which no comb could hope to untangle. Whereas Astrid constantly tried to flatten hers. For one moment, she tried to imagine being a boy, being like him.

"I'm sorry," she managed through gritted teeth.

"You don't mean it," he replied tersely.

Bonnie closed her eyes. "I'll do anything."

Perhaps it was her shuttered eyelids - the eyes shifting back and forth underneath the thin membrane - that convinced him. Or perhaps he wasn't convinced, just tempted to see what "anything" entailed.

"Come on," he beckoned, pushing past her.

* * *

They walked - him a few languid steps in front, her trailing behind, looking over her shoulder in case Astrid happened to call for her - down the wooden path towards the lake. It was a small climb up a hill, and then a lean descent towards the bank, hidden away by sleeping willows.

Bonnie was not allowed to walk by the lake alone. Not for fear of drowning, but for fear of slush and muck getting into her good shoes.

"Take them off," he instructed, nudging his head at her strapped boots.

He stood a few feet away, bare-footed himself, hands shoved in the billowing sides of his large shirt. He looked younger than her, almost. But no, not if you looked into his eyes.

Bonnie bent down and started unlacing.

Dragonflies hummed in the air. It was that time in the afternoon when the sun became one with the sky and everything was a grainy yellow.

He kicked a stone with his foot. "Faster."

Her nimble fingers worked against time. When she was finally released from the grip of leather and rubber, her toes squelched in the mud with glee. It stank of sulfur. The sensation was cool and foreign and pleasant.

It felt like a living creature under her feet. Like a little pet she had uncovered.

"Get down on all fours," he said, leaning against the chalky bark of a willow. His eyes were almost contemplative.

"Why?" she asked, staring at the mud.

"It has to get in everywhere."

Bonnie sucked on her teeth. "Will it hurt?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Nothing hurts. You're just weak."

"I'm not!" she cried out, feeling like she'd had enough of his attitude. "Watch me." She lifted her skirts and slowly sank down on her knees, thrusting her fingers into the dirt.

It was funny, her feet were cold but her hands felt warm. The hem of her dress trailed down into the muck.

"Lie down," he continued, stepping away from the tree.

 _Might as well_ , she thought. _I'm already too dirty._

She heard the buzzing of gnats in her ears but she couldn't see them because her eyes were too close to the ground. She let herself fall on her belly in the mud. It was like jumping into a swing. The earth seemed to be dangling her, up and down, up and down. The smell of salt and mire was overwhelming. She rolled on her back and looked up at the swaying branches of the willow.

Her brother came into her line of sight. He stood above her, a sentinel. His eyes surveyed the mess she'd become from head to toe. He almost looked at peace, as if the sight of her filth soothed his temper.

And then he lifted his bare foot. Bonnie gasped, watching his bended knee. The shadow of his leg hung ominously over her frame. She wondered if he was going to step on her, but at the last minute, his foot landed next to her head. He was walking towards the water.

"Get up now."

Bonnie dredged herself up, one elbow at a time. She smelled like rotten eggs.

"Are we going to wash?"

For the first time, she heard him chuckle. The sound was like someone scraping two rocks together. Rough, but mineral.

"No. Are you going to ask more questions?"

Bonnie wiped the grime from her forehead. "I can't not ask."

"If you want to be bad, you just do what I say and stop talking."

She bit her tongue and nodded her head. He wasn't deceiving her, not as far as she could tell.

Niklaus waded into the shallow water until it reached his ankles. Bonnie followed gingerly.

He began to untie his breeches.

The afternoon sun turned its merciless gaze upon them, reclaiming its seat in the sky. The grainy hour had passed.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

"Taking a piss in the lake."

Bonnie blinked the globs of dirt from her eyes. "A piss."

"Let's see you do it. Standing up, that is."

Bonnie almost laughed, scared. "I can't do it like that!"

He shrugged, as if it was all the same to him. "Knew you wouldn't anyway."

Before she could protest, he was already releasing a stream into the water. Bonnie could not look away. She had never seen one before. Had never even wondered what men had between their legs, seeing as she did not know many of them. He was only a boy, though. His penis was a pinkish grey, delicate but fat enough to scare her, and it felt like the center of his badness.

 _This must be the black nail_ , she thought ominously.

Suddenly, it did not matter anymore. The day was hot and her grandmother was dead. Her real father was a ghost.

She lifted her skirts to her chest and closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation of release.

It was difficult, unusual and unpleasant, but she persevered. When Bonnie thought of something, she willed it into existence.

When she opened her eyes, a warm trickle of pee was running down her leg into the water.

That was the advantage of boys. They always aimed away from themselves.

He was watching her from the corner of his eye, his gaze was trained on the little river she had unleashed.

His lips twisted into the facsimile of a smile. It made him look uglier. "Now we wash."

Bonnie stared at the murky waters at their feet, tainted by the elements which had rushed out of them. She remembered Astrid scolding her for biting into apples and letting their juice dribble down her chin.

She was a little afraid, but it was exciting to be going this far into the abyss.

"One, two, three," he counted, and his hand suddenly gripped her arm and pushed her down. She clung to him blindly, as sulfurous water flooded her nostrils. He followed after her, lowering himself, like a newborn being baptized.

She spat weeds from her mouth as she came up for air. The water was still shallow; she could almost sit down on the pebbly bottom. The smell of urine filled up her mouth. Her brother was floating a few feet away, staring up at the sky.

"Am I bad now?" she asked quietly, looking at the dirt under her nails which the water had not removed.

He lifted his head a fraction and squinted at her. "No."

"But –"

"Not yet," he added, rising from the water abruptly. "It's a start."

Bonnie smiled to herself. She would be a quick study. Anything to prevent being sent away.

* * *

Elijah watched their little bodies in a state of half-undress. Both of them relieving into the water, like mischievous satyrs in a mythological tableau.

He could not look away. The image was too arresting in its horror and yet perfectly quaint, as if nothing else could be expected from his brother. His all-consuming brother, who had tried this trick on him once, had tried to draw him into his web of unconscious destruction and prurience.

Elijah had not fallen.

How had he persuaded that little girl?

Both of them so young and free of sin.

Yet, precisely because they could not be called moral creatures, they were dangerous.

Elijah turned away, praying fervently for his soul.

His. Not theirs.

He suspected already - although his suspicion would only become real years later - that their souls were damned together.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: welcome back to Flowers in the Attic, the Victorian klonnie edition! Thank you for your lovely reviews, I'm stoked to take you further on this trash journey, hope you enjoy!_

* * *

 **3: needles**

"You have to be quiet."

She said this more to herself than him, because he was as still as a statue. He reminded her of the bust her grandmother had bought at an auction in town. Abby had sold it quickly after, claiming it was an eyesore and not worth the trouble of dusting, but Bonnie remembered it, sitting in the corner of the garden where the ferns were thickest. It was the likeness of a Roman soldier. She wondered what had happened to it, where it had landed, if it was still in one piece.

Niklaus waited by the side of the door, one sole stubbornly toeing the threshold, even though Bonnie had told him he was forbidden from entering her mother's room.

"Hurry up," he beckoned, studying his nails.

Bonnie walked along the empty wooden boards with some trepidation. Her boots scuffed, although she did not mean to. Her mother detested carpets and rugs and ornamental doilies - perhaps as a form of rebellion, since Sheila was very fond of anything she could use as a table runner. Her room was bare, though it wasn't very clean. There was a smell of dying flowers and beeswax, although Bonnie could discern no potted plant in sight. A tall and wavering poplar did stoop its branches against her mother's window, but she only saw the skeletal twigs rubbing against the pane. It had been vacated recently with Mikael's descent upon them, but Abby still spent some hours here alone. Doing only God knew what. Bonnie was rarely allowed in this room, which was why her brother had insisted.

 _You have to steal something._

That was the next step in becoming bad; bad enough to stay at home and never go to school.

Her little "lark" in the lake, as it was later described by Astrid, had been a good start, but it was rather unmade when her governess did not take her directly to her mother, to be seen in her bedraggled state, but to the dreaded wooden bathtub, out on the steps of the meat-house. Bennett Hall had long been deprived of domestic animals for slaughter, but they kept up appearances, and as such, any meat bought from town was dried and salted there. There was a perennial smell of gutted entrails and soggy intestines wafting from the abattoir. Martha and her younger apprentice (a kitchen mouse by the name of Prue) scrubbed her vigorously in the lukewarm water, tugging at her stubborn curls and making her eyes water from lye soap. During summers, Bonnie was infrequently washed in the reedy tub because it had been Sheila's belief that bathing should not happen indoors, when possible.

Niklaus did not receive a bath in the reedy tub because neither Martha nor Prue could find him; he'd vanished quickly after Astrid came to fetch Bonnie. Not that he seemed to need one. The next day, Bonnie saw him sitting on a haystack in the turnip patch, looking averagely clean and presentable, for him. His gaze was shorn, blond eyelashes fringing eyes that held no expression, as if nothing had happened.

Bonnie waved at him uncertainly and put her hands to her mouth to call him, but he only placed a calloused thumb to his lips. _Shh._

She understood. He was going to continue her education.

Her daylight transgression of her mother's sanctum was one such lesson.

She had pondered a great deal what she might filch from this room of secrets where Abby slept and ate alone. The nights spent in such thieving, vagabond thoughts were rather thrilling. She had never really stolen anything in her life, except maybe an apple from the kitchen, and that was usually left there for her.

She'd met her brother in the dimness of the servants' stairs and whispered to him that she would steal something small, something that would go unnoticed.

He had sneered at her. "You're supposed to get _caught_. You're to take something big and costly. Something you want."

Bonnie had been perturbed by the suggestion. "Something I _want_?"

The thought had not occurred to her, not _once_ during the long nights spent in illicit reveries. What _could_ she want from her mother's room? She'd never allowed herself to desire things that gravitated around Abby. This was certainly a novelty.

"There must be something," he'd insisted with a knowing glint in his eye.

And indeed, there was.

Bonnie crept quietly to the heavy black armoire where Abby kept her lilac-smelling dresses. She knew that at the very bottom, under an unwieldy shoe box, her mother kept a red case, the insides clothed in crepe and velour. She knew this because she had seen Astrid fetch it once for the mistress.

In this case there was a collection of beautiful sewing needles, ranging from very small, to the size of knives. Bonnie had always marveled at this treasure. When she had asked Martha about the case, the old woman had told her that Abby had it among her few possessions when she returned, with child, at Bennett Hall. Bonnie'd often wondered if the case was from her father, but why would a man give her mother needles?

It took some huffing and puffing to remove all the trinkets and baubles that covered the closet floor. The smell was oppressive, moth balls and lavender and cough drops. The shoe box was heavier than she'd expected. She hauled it with her entire little body. It was a round thing, with a bow on top. Bonnie felt a little tempted to untie it and take the shoes. Theft opened appetites, the world was suddenly enlarged. But she shook her head against such false lures. The prize was afield.

Her hands reached for the red case and pulled it out.

* * *

They sat a few feet apart on a pair of upturned crates in a shaded corner of the stable. Up until Mikael had installed himself as master of the house, only one lonely, sleepy mare had occupied it, but now she was surrounded by two stallions and four geldings. The stable-boy who mucked the floors had gone to lunch, and so the two found ample privacy to sample the needles.

She opened the case with trembling hands. From inside there came a smell of cities and opera-houses. Not that she had ever been to either, but she could imagine. The needles sat each in their little hook on a fat velour cushion, the color of dog-rose. They did not gleam in the weak light coming through the shafts in the wood. They seemed to reject light, their opaline surface devouring any flash. They were mute, they alluded to nothing. Each needle ended, or began, with an ear-shaped loop, which she knew was actually called "eye". Her body thrummed to touch them.

Her brother was staring at the horses instead.

"That one Father whipped this morning," he said, pointing at one of the geldings who was chewing on a string of dried barley.

"Oh, why?"

He shrugged. "Took a wrong turn and almost ran into a road-post. But he doesn't realize the horse's blind in one eye."

Bonnie felt a little sour that he was not sharing her interest in the needles. "How do you know he's blind in one eye?"

"I did a trick, held up my hand, and covered his good one," he explained, pinning a small bug that was running up his leg.

Bonnie chewed on her lip. "Does your father know?"

"Not yet."

"What'll he do when he finds out?"

He stretched his leg forward, checking for ticks. "Send him to a doctor. Then shoot him."

Bonnie flinched. "But it's just one eye."

"The second one will die out too," he explained, wriggling his toes. "Anyway, Father doesn't like broken things."

"Your father is mean," she blurted out, pressing her knees together.

Niklaus rolled his eyes and finally deigned to look down at the case. "Best you don't say that around the house. He's your father too now."

"I wasn't going to!" she snapped, irritated that he thought her so reckless. "I can keep secrets, like this one."

His eyes surveyed the needles clinically. "Won't be much of a secret when your mother finds out."

"She's _your_ mother now too," Bonnie punctuated gravely.

His jaw ticked, as if the bugs that were running up his legs had found a way inside his cartilage.

Bonnie ignored his discomfort. She covered her mouth in delight. "I can't believe I stole them!"

He nodded, distracted. "We could use them to put it out of its misery."

"What?"

He reached forward and slipped out the longest needle from the hook. It was bigger than his forefinger.

"Could do it with this one. I know where to cut."

Bonnie stared at his fingers wrapped around the needle. "What do you mean?"

"The belly, below the guts. That's the softest place. Easier than the throat, and the horse doesn't spook."

It took a few moments for her to realize what he was saying, and when she did, she laughed, forcefully, pretending it was a joke. "Ha ha, put it back now!"

He merely flipped it to his other hand, inspecting it like a man deciding on a weapon.

"Put it back now, you're scaring me!"

He looked at her then, unimpressed. "Scaring you? The animals' going to die anyway."

"I don't want to play like this," she intoned, pressing an uncertain hand on the red case.

"We're not _playing_ ," he sneered. "I'm making you bad, remember?"

"All right," she mumbled. "Then try it on me."

He paused, balancing the needle on his knuckles. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't – don't cut up the horse, you can cut _me_ a little. But just a little."

What he did next startled her quite a bit. He laughed. It didn't sound like a laugh at first, but more like the braying of the horses around them. It came from somewhere below his belly, maybe from the softest place where a needle could cut through easily. She shuddered.

He shook his head. "You can't save the horse."

"I know _that_ , but I don't want to spoil my mother's needles on it," she said, marveling at the ingenious lie. He didn't look like he believed her, but he worked his mouth in agreement.

"And then I'll cut _you_ up, just a little," Bonnie added. "To be fair."

Niklaus scoffed at her idea of fairness, but made no further comment to dissuade her.

Bonnie held out her palm bravely and closed her eyes, squeezing them until she saw little lights against her eyelids. "Make it quick."

He yanked her wrist towards him, pressing his thumb in the hollow of her palm and splaying it open. His hand was warm, but it tickled like grass. His touch, however, did not tickle. He was mean, like his father. Her flesh hurt from the inside.

"Just do it already," she begged, hating the dreadful wait before the act.

Suddenly, he was holding one of her fingers up, isolating it from the rest. She felt the tug of her joints, the way her hand rebelled. And then he was pressing the sharp tip against the little ball of her middle finger.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch!"

"Hold still," he hissed, his grip turning to iron. "I saw a doctor do this once."

She pinched one eye open, afraid she'd see a muddy stream running down her finger, but instead it looked like a pin-prick, a round bubble of blood flowering against her skin.

The pain subsided.

"He tested the blood, like this," he said, pulling her finger towards his mouth. She had done this before; she remembered, dimly, finding a whorl in the kitchen floor, a dark hole where a million little beads glittered, like dewdrops on a spider's web. Later she learned there were just mice, but she'd stuck her finger in that hole and felt the tide of an underground pool washing over her fingers.

His mouth was hot like coals and his lips folded over her knuckle, sucking the blood away.

Bonnie squeezed her eyes half-shut as little jerks of electricity ran down her arm.

"Tastes brackish," he decided, releasing her finger from his mouth. "That's good."

Her hand dropped back in her lap with a thud.

The horses snuffled in their sleep.

"My – my turn," she said after a pregnant pause.

He offered his hand almost lazily, planting it in the space between them. Bonnie stared at it for a moment, reflecting on its singularity. The fingers were awry, the joints bent sideways, the veins beneath pulpy. The skin was cracked, and between the cracks there was this white light, like wool. When she looked closer, it was just a delicate constellation of scars.

She wrapped her small hand around his middle finger and grabbed a fresh needle from the case.

She held the tip against the calloused ball, watching his face for fear or pain. He stared back plainly, like someone watching the sky or the movement of a carriage down the road. Patient and absent, a Roman soldier.

She was like a horse and he was trying not to spook her.

Bonnie clenched her teeth and jammed the needle forward in a quick stabbing motion.

A short gasp signaled her success. His face contracted with a spasm. She had not been as precise. A sizable gash, much bigger than hers, had broken his skin. The blood poured freely.

Bonnie shrieked, frightened by her miscarriage. She dove forward and covered his finger with her mouth, sucking and licking desperately, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm – sorry," she mumbled through gulps, "I'm – so – sorry."

He watched her with half-parted lips, his expression neither fierce, nor dull. He was watching an experiment, something he found riveting by virtue of its properties. Her concern was contemptible, but it was also enticing. He pretended to feel another spasm and delivered a dramatic hiss of pain.

She gripped his whole wrist, cradling his arm at her chest. "I'm so sorry!"

He almost smiled. "That's all right."

* * *

"Should I hide it in my room?" she asked in a whisper as the blue of the late noon sun washed her feet.

He kicked a pebble into the red dust of the road.

"We could bury it somewhere," she ventured, hugging the case to her chest.

"Give it to me," he said, at length. "I'll throw it away."

"No!" she protested at once. She was thinking of the horse. "It's _my_ mother's case, so –"

"I thought you said she's my mother too," he replied snidely.

"She was mine _first_."

He did not seem to care one way or another, but she thought she saw the ghost of disappointment on his face.

"Tell you what," she began in the mercantile way Martha sometimes used to get her to eat something stinky and sour, "you can have the case. I'll take the needles."

He wasn't too happy with this arrangement, but he shrugged in agreement.

With great relief, she unhooked all the needles from their notches and poured them in the little pocket of her dress. Her fingers lingered on the velour one last time before giving him the case.

"There, that's fair," she said with a sweet smile.

Her brother looked up at the ancient house looming behind them, waiting for their entrance. "There'll be screams tonight."

* * *

"Where is it?! What have you done with it?! _Tell_ me! Thieves, all of you! Get out of my sight! I'll have you hanged for this!"

Bonnie hid her head under the pillow as her mother's screams echoed down the corridor. Abby's wrath was a thing of wonder, an eldritch creature of the sea with limbs made of obsidian. The servants scattered in her wake.

Bonnie's heart beat like a hammer. She'd hidden the needles under the mattress, but they seemed to prick at her now.

She heard Mikael's measured steps down the hall.

"Calm yourself, my darling –"

His next words were swallowed by an altercation. Bodies seemed to collide against each other, thuds and thumps and blows, but they did not sound violent to her young ears.

Mikael was carrying her mother to their bedroom. "Oh, you beautiful, vile thing…"

* * *

Abby buried her moans in her throat as her loving husband carved her breasts with his teeth. She ran her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair and felt the muscles thrumming at his back.

No one could resist her, not even when they wanted to damn her.

Where were her beloved needles? She wanted to sob.

Mikael kissed and stroked her skin until it was as red as it would have been if he had applied a poker.

She sobbed with grief and pleasure.

* * *

In the attic, Niklaus smiled and slid his fingers in the needles' empty hooks.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: hey hey hey, who's in the mood for repressed Victorian erotics? *raises hand* I have to say I did miss writing for this story because disturbing 19th century shenanigans are pretty much my obsession. Thank you for reviewing so far and indulging in my weird kinks. In terms of this chapter, I do have to give out a big warning so:_

 _ **Please Read** : as you may have noticed from the title, this chapter contains scenes of a sensitive nature which, given the historical context may put some of you off. There is little actual violence involved and I do think the framing is erotic and exploratory, but if you feel this is too much for you, please don't go any further. _

_quick reminder of last chapter: Nik convinced Bonnie to steal her mother's priceless needle case so that she'll be seen as a bad seed and not sent to school. Children have convoluted logic, okay?_

 _Anyway, enjoy!_

* * *

 **4: whip**

"I did it. It was me."

The needles clattered softly on the threadbare carpet as she released them from her fist. The model was too faint to see now, but Bonnie knew it had once been the Tree of Paradise. A series of triangles all pointing up from a thick brown trunk. Martha had told her that every young girl who hoped to be married knew that model and sewed it on quilts and counterpanes.

Her mother was staring at the model too. She was fighting the instinct to kneel and gather her possessions.

"Where is the case?" she asked, burying one fist into her dress, scratching at her own thigh.

Bonnie bowed her head low. "I threw it away."

Niklaus smiled as he hunched on the stairs. The red case was in the attic, stashed safely in his pillow case.

"You threw it away," Abby echoed without expression. There was no rage in her voice. Mikael must have drunk it all from her. He sat with his back to the fireplace, watching the little play unfold.

Bonnie worried her lower lip with her teeth. She just wanted to be punished and get it over with. She wanted to hear she won't be sent to school. She hoped she would not have to do many other bad things.

"I should whip you naked for what you've done," her mother finally said with a sour mouth.

Bonnie felt a pang between her ribs, like a second heart that pumped cold river water in her veins and froze her limbs.

Abby took a step forward. "You will learn your lesson that way."

"Now, now," Mikael murmured from a distance. "Let's not get carried away. You should not have to whip the girl. _I_ will take care of her discipline."

Her mother pushed a loose curl from her face and pinned it back in her chignon. "Will you?"

Bonnie wanted to scream, although it was not so much terror that clawed at her throat as a sense of complete perdition. She was certain she would not survive the night. Mikael would _kill_ her. She did not know how, but something about his posture, his very _smell_ announced it. If her power lay in telling the truth, there was no clearer truth than this.

She was about to cling to her mother's skirt and beg forgiveness when she saw her stepbrother step into the room. He must have waited in the shadows.

"Let me do it, Father."

Mikael turned on his heels with a ferocious glare. He disliked being interrupted. The line of his nose reminded Bonnie of a sickle abandoned in a wheat field.

"Why should I do that, boy?" he scoffed.

Niklaus stared at his half-sister and his lips perked up into an impish smile. "Because it would be more humiliating if it was me."

Abby wrinkled her nose. "Why does your son eavesdrop on our discussion?"

Mikael's thumb traced the wax droppings of a candlestick. Bonnie wondered if he meant to seize it and throw it at her mother's head. But he smiled.

"He is your son too now, dearest. You must learn to tolerate him. And I think it a fine idea, Niklaus. Show your sister how it's done."

"Yes, Father. You've taught me well in that regard," the boy replied and the muscles underneath his woolen shirt rippled like a small earthquake.

* * *

Her fingers on the banister were throbbing, as if pressing the same piano clap. Her stomach was hard as stone and she felt it a great effort to climb the stairs. Still, she asked him quietly, "What do you mean he taught you well?"

Her brother didn't answer but simply stuck a thumb in the hollow of her back.

Bonnie decided he was rotten, after all.

They climbed up to her room which seemed so small now and swollen with the elements. Moths had eaten at the green wallpaper and rain water had left grey smears on the ceiling. The bed was not made; Astrid had not had time to air the sheets.

They were supposed to do it here, with the door slightly ajar so Mikael and Abby could hear.

His father had given him his beloved cat o' nine tails for the task. Niklaus knew it well. It looked black but it was actually a carmine color which had slowly dimmed with use. The thongs were unusually thick and speckled. It was meant to be crocodile skin, but Niklaus had his doubts. The popper was painted white, and it had oddly remained so despite the sweat and blood that had baptized it. He had felt the whip on his back many a times. He almost missed its midnight caress.

Bonnie looked at the window above her bed, where the noon sun was peacefully slipping over the world, while she could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

She brought her hands to the back of her dress and untied the buttons running down her spine. She wasn't wearing her petticoat. Abby had told Astrid to punish her if she neglected her under-garments. Suppose this was good punishment, either way.

Bonnie pressed the front of the dress to her chest as she exposed her back to him. She was still too young for nakedness to mean damnation, but Abby had told her not to reveal too much. _I could reveal nothing. I could be spared,_ she thought moodily. _You don't have to whip me._ But she didn't know who was the recipient of this thought; her mother, her stepfather…the boy standing behind her.

Niklaus noted that the skin of her back was without blemish. That did not mean it was smooth. There were invisible marks there; the marks of a child left to her own devices. But someone like Mikael would see nothing but untrammeled softness.

She already had the shadow of a slope at the waist, the hint of a girlish figure. He screwed up his lips in annoyance. All bodies went the same way. You could see the future in the joints and sinews. Elijah had told him once, when he was feeling particularly sacerdotal, that "there can be little good about the coming days, for we will have committed more sins than we have now". So the future was always an amalgamation of more mistakes. Niklaus would have liked to whip the future out of her.

Bonnie did not shiver or shake. She stood with her eyes to the window, straight as an arrow.

He came forward with the cat' o nine gripped in his fist.

"You should try and whimper. Not too loud, though. But make it echo."

She did not understand him. Was he playing a game? He seemed fond of them. She pressed her dress to her throat.

"I won't."

His breath was tickling her hair. He was a head taller than her. His thumb was suddenly at the base of her nape.

"Don't you want to be on the stage? I hear all girls dream of that." And he pressed the hilt of the whip into the curve of her spine. She felt its warm weight and the strength of its bearers, two generations before them. She remembered that her grandmother had sung songs about prostration, about falling on your knees with your face in the red dust, waiting for the cruelty to end. She remembered the psalm that said "by the river of Babylon, I sat down and wept…" , but all of these entwining shadows never felt real to her and this did not feel real either.

He ran the popper gently up and down the furrow of her spine. It was ticklish. The nerves under her skin were like ants, running back and forth from the touch.

She started to cry out softly as he continued to caress her back.

He lightly flicked the whip against her shoulder blades and it almost made her laugh but she cried out again, a languorous sad moan.

"That's good," he whispered.

He flicked the whip again and again, letting the popper brush her dimples of Venus. It was a maddening sensation, like insects biting you or fingers kneading you or mouths kissing you. She had to wriggle her toes to keep from giggling.

And then he cracked the whip hard at the wooden board at her feet. Bonnie felt a pleasant vibration at the threatening sound. She issued a long whimper. He cracked it again harder, making dust come out of the old rug, and she locked her ankles to the side and bit her lip. He cracked it at the wall next, making some of the masonry quiver. Bonnie felt a coal-like warmth in her belly and she moaned and begged him to please stop. But he lashed it at her bed and the heavy old mattress creaked while Bonnie wrung her fingers and made little sounds of pain. He looked like a dancer mid-step, thrashing the very air around his body. He whipped her little brass trunk that served as wardrobe, making the metal sing. He flogged her scant dresses. Dainty straps and bits of lace sprinkled on the floor like a powder. He flogged them too. She whimpered.

Everything in her room was whipped, and every time, she felt the twin thrum of it in her blood. She wanted to squeeze something between her legs.

At length, he stopped and stared out the window. "Father said to give you ten lashes, which is generous of him."

Bonnie turned to him slightly, still holding her dress. "What if they look at my back and find no marks?"

Niklaus slipped the cat' o nine tails in his trousers. He walked up to her.

"Ten lashes don't leave a deep mark. But…"

Before she had any way of protesting, he ran both his hands down her back, nails digging into her flesh like splinters. It was like being picked up by an eagle - a bird of prey with curling talons. It was painful and scouring and she sighed deeply, because a tension in her stomach was released and she could breathe again.

"Thank you," she murmured sluggishly, as the sun was setting.

Niklaus' face crumpled. "I did you no favors."

Bonnie started buttoning up her dress, though the flesh still throbbed painfully. "But you didn't listen to your father."

Suddenly her jaw was yanked forward and she was staring into a pair of angry cobalt eyes. "I don't, as a rule. I'll hurt you when I want to. Not when _he_ says."

Bonnie gripped his wrist. "When will you hurt me?"

Niklaus pulled her closer. "In the dead of the night…at the crack of dawn…when you feel happy and safe. You'll never know."

They moved away from each other at the same time, like phantoms leaving two bodies behind.

"I still don't want to go to school," she whispered as he stood at the slightly parted door. She wondered if Abby and Mikael had been satisfied with her sounds.

Her brother nodded gravely. "You won't."

And she believed him.

* * *

In her dream, she asked him better questions. She asked him how many times his father had whipped him and how many lashes there had been. In the dream, they were sitting on her bed and she asked him to pull up his shirt so she could see. She asked him why his father trusted him to do his bidding. She asked him why he had not _killed_ his father. And she cried, because that was a terrible thing to ask a son, but she had done it either way. Parents died anyway, and the children remained.

She woke up just the same, alone in her room in the middle of the night, with a hankering for knowledge. She realized that in a week's time she would turn ten.

She saw fireflies in the dark, wisps of light from the crack of a whip. She rubbed her eyes and got up to use her chamber pot.

A quarter of a moon slipped by her window, and by its light she saw that the liquid in the pot was not clear. There was something muddy about it, like the water of the lake. She didn't want to touch it, but it smelled like wormy fruit, the kind that Martha used for marmalade.

She wanted to cry for Astrid, but the poor girl was probably asleep in the servants' quarters and she couldn't climb all the way up there to wake her.

Bonnie feared all of a sudden that it was her brother, exacting his promise. He had said _In the dead of the night…at the crack of dawn…_

"He came into the room and cut me up," she whispered in her fist. But even she didn't believe that.

When she turned back towards the bed, she saw a great big stain on the sheet. She couldn't discern its color. She was not afraid to touch it, however. It smeared her finger, leaving a gelatinous trail behind.

Was she dying? She did not feel sick. Maybe it was a short season's illness, like hay fever.

 _But if I'm bleeding, they can't send me away to school_.

The thought cheered her. She lay down in bed and hoped she would bleed some more.

* * *

Niklaus stared at the cadaverous sheet and it seemed to stare back at him. There was a red eye in the middle.

It looked as if a small animal had bled to death. He wondered if Bonnie slept with little mice and birds tucked in her chest.

The laundry room was very hot as the water had been set to boil. Martha was mixing the lye for the soap. When she saw him raking through the wash baskets she yelled at him to get out.

"Is that her blood?" he asked the servant boldly.

Martha shook her fist at him and he thought he saw her blackened nail. "I'll have _your_ blood if you don't run off."

But as he climbed down the stairs with a heavy foot, he thought he heard her mutter in his wake, "we have a little lady now."

He did not like the sound of that.


End file.
